SECTION A

THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES

The forces by means of which we increase the number of desirable things,

or increase the desirability of things

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRIMARY FACTORS OF PRODUCTION

However strongly we believe that this is the best possible world, and however clearly we see that a bounteous nature has provided for the satisfaction of many of our needs, we cannot help acknowledging that, at any time and in any place where we happen to be, some desirable things are scarce, some undesirable things are abundant, and some things otherwise desirable are so superabundant as to become undesirable. That being the case, the obvious thing to do seems to be to set about improving the situation, increasing the quantity of those desirable things which are scarce, and decreasing the quantity of those things which are too abundant for our well-being or comfort.

The rearrangement of matter. Matter itself cannot, of course, be either increased or diminished in quantity. It can be rearranged in such ways as to become more usable or less harmful. This rearrangement may take on various forms. All the elements which are now in a loaf of bread were formerly in the soil, the water, and the atmosphere. In those forms they were of no use to man. They have been rearranged and assembled, their form has been changed. This is sometimes called form-utility. The wheat from which the flour was made, and the flour from which the bread was made, had to be transported from places where there was a superabundance to a place where there was a scarcity, in order that they might become usable. This is sometimes called place-utility. Some goods have to be stored and preserved. At one time they are so abundant as to be unusable. At another time, unless they were preserved, they would be so scarce as to cause

hardship or even famine. Their utility is increased by storing and preserving them. This is sometimes called time-utility.

A keen observer has remarked that men are engaged in the simple work of moving things from one place to another. Whether one is writing with a pen, putting chemicals into a test tube, or irrigating dry land, all that men literally do is to move materials. Of course, there are methods and purposes in all this moving of things. It is method and purpose which the mind sees back of that which the eye sees, and which the mind performs beyond that which the muscles perform. One of the wonderful things about man's activity is the vast results that follow a very slight rearrangement of materials. By stirring the soil and placing seeds in a certain relation to it the forces which produce plant growth are set to work supplying our needs. By rearranging a few stones and clods a stream may be diverted and made to water barren fields until they blossom and bear fruit; or the stream may be made to turn a wheel and drive machinery which can accomplish tasks far too great for human muscles. By taking advantage of his knowledge man can, by these slight rearrangements of matter, harness natural forces and compel them to serve his purpose.

Discriminating between friends and enemies. The general purpose of all this work is to increase the objects of desire and decrease the objects of repugnance. The process of increasing the objects of desire is called production, and that of decreasing the objects of repugnance is called destruction. Frequently these two processes are so closely related as to make them difficult to separate. In order to increase the number of desirable plants, we must destroy their rivals, the weeds, as well as the pests which feed upon them. Out of the various forms of animal and plant life which would live in our neighborhood, we choose the more desirable and make it easy for them to live and multiply, and make it hard for the less desirable to survive. Man merely holds the balance of power and

uses his limited physical strength and his superior intellect in giving the advantage to his friends in the subhuman world and in placing his enemies at a disadvantage. In the field of mechanics, likewise, by moving a vast number of pieces of matter, thereby bringing natural forces into play, he assembles powerful engines. Then, as in the case of a locomotive engineer, by a very moderate pressure he moves a lever which in turn sets powerful forces to work serving his purpose. Other engines, equally powerful and controlled with equal ease, set powerful forces to work destroying his enemies, both human and subhuman.

One of the labors of Hercules, it will be remembered, was to clean the Augean stables. According to the legend, three thousand oxen had been stabled there for thirty years, and the stalls had never been cleaned. Being required to clean these stables in one day, he turned the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through them, and thus accomplished what his monstrous strength would not have enabled him to do directly. Very commonplace men accomplish greater engineering feats than that nowadays.

Writers who have wished to impress their readers with the vastness of some political or social revolution have sometimes adopted the device of picturing someone as falling, just before the revolution, into a Rip Van Winkle sleep and awaking just after the revolution into a new world. His perplexity in trying to understand his new surroundings is not only amusing but usually very instructive. We need not adopt the device of whisking someone through an interval of time in order to impress him with the change which man has wrought in his material surroundings. It is only necessary to imagine a philosophical savage transported over a few hundred miles of space and set down in a modern industrial center. Let us imagine him on a busy corner of some great city, where pavements, street-car tracks, curbstones, and sidewalks have replaced the native turf; where, instead of trees, tall buildings of steel and

concrete rise hundreds of feet into the air, and the narrow strip of blue between is obscured by elevated railroads, trolley wires, poles, and other obstacles; while the ground underneath is honeycombed with cellars and sub-cellars, subways and subsubways, and a network of sewers, conduits, and other subterranean passages. In trying to picture to ourselves the surprise and perplexity of our philosophical savage, we may arrive at some conception of the magnitude of the change which man has wrought in his natural environment.

Man, nature, and tools. The two original factors in this work are man and nature, nature presenting the material to be worked upon and also certain powerful forces to aid man in his work, and man furnishing the knowledge, the ingenuity, the foresight, the patience, and also a certain amount of muscular or physical power to work upon the material which nature furnishes. Both the raw material and the natural forces, in their elemental state, are commonly included under the name land. Not only the soil fertility and the minerals, but also the sunlight and sun heat, the rain and the atmosphere, are commonly regarded as the appurtenances of land. The most important quality of land is that of extension. Whoever controls a portion of the earth's surface owns thereby the air which lies above it, also a certain fraction of the sun's rays and a certain portion of the rainfall, together with the soil and the subsoil immediately below the surface and the moisture beneath. Under some systems of law he also owns the minerals which are found anywhere beneath the surface. In fact, ownership of land, under these systems, extends from the center of the earth to the uttermost heights above the surface. However, we are not, at this point in our discussion, so much interested in what is included in the ownership of land as in what is included under land as a factor in production. It may be said to include all the materials furnished by nature for man to work upon.

While man and nature are the original and primary factors in the problem, a very little study will show anyone that man